SNAFU: Heroes: An Anthology of Military Horror

“He said ‘The whole building was in ruins, Finch. There wasn’t a part of the walls that wasn’t broken and burnt. We found a lot of bodies, but they were all in bad shape.’ I asked him to elaborate and he did, I also bummed three cigarettes off him while we talked. ‘We went down into that cave you talked about, the sub-basement. There was a lot of stuff down there that had been busted all to hell. I don’t know what those machines they had were supposed to do, but they were melted and shot and a couple of those things that had been bolted to the ground were knocked over and smashed so bad you could barely tell what they were supposed to be. Finch, some of those Germans were damned big men. Like over seven feet tall and that was after the fire got done roasting them. You know how meat gets smaller when it cooks too long? I don’t want to know how big they were before that fire.’

“‘Did you see any Americans?’ I had to ask, Eddie. I had to know if Crowley was down there and dead or if he’d escaped.

“‘I don’t know for sure, Finch. All I know is that nothing was alive when we got there.’ He put a hand on my shoulder as he stood and got ready to leave for his shift. The man looked like he’d seen things he never wanted to think about again. You know the look, Eddie. So do I.

“A week after that I was reassigned. I got my orders and it was back to duty for me, and that was fine. They wanted me on one of the companies heading for Germany and I wanted to be there, because I wanted to lose myself in something other than my own miserable thoughts. I couldn’t take being alone with my memories any longer. I’d have killed someone, I’m certain of it. I kept feeling bad for all the men I’d killed and I kept feeling even worse for the folks they’d made into those things.

“As I was heading for my new squad, being driven down in a truck, I looked out at the sides of the road and tried not to think about the monsters or what I had done. I tried to forget how I’d abandoned Jonathan Crowley. I was thinking about him a lot, and hating myself for leaving him behind, for not even being able to give him a proper funeral like I swore I’d do.

“I wasn’t paying too much attention to the sights, but I always waved to the other soldiers I saw walking along with their gear and those lost looks on their faces. Just a little courtesy to let them know we were all in it together. About halfway to the post they gave me, I spotted another small group walking along the side of the road and I looked up from my hands to wave, and I froze as surely as I would have if I’d fallen into a pit of angry rattlesnakes.

“I looked right into the face of Jonathan Crowley, and I know I must have turned dead white. He looked right back at me and he smiled that nasty smile of his, and he winked.

“We weren’t driving all that fast. It wasn’t possible to drive over the roads in the area at high speed without throwing half the soldiers out the back of the trucks.

“Jonathan Crowley got a running start and caught the back bumper of the truck I was on. I thought I was going to wet myself when he climbed over the gate.

“One of the sergeants tried to question him, but Crowley shut him up with a look and then walked over and sat next to me.” My grandfather shook a bit as he spoke.

“You ever have to leave someone behind, Eddie? Someone you wanted to save and couldn’t?”

I allowed that I had, and tried not to think about Corporal Murphy, who begged me to come back for him just before the napalm eradicated the spot where he’d been bleeding out on the jungle floor.

“I swear to you, Eddie, I thought he was going to kill me right then and there. I hadn’t seen what was left of the château, but I’d seen the people who came back from it and they came back haunted by what they’d seen as surely as I was.

“‘Finch,’ he said to me. ‘Finch, I thought for sure you got yourself killed up there.’

“I think I whimpered. He was smiling, you see, and that smile of his, damn, Eddie, that smile of his was a frightful thing.

“He reached out and touched my lapels, straightening them as he looked me over. ‘Glad you made it, old son. Listen, you ever need me, you give me a call. I’ll come running. And if not, who knows, maybe I’ll come see you in Summitville. I’ve heard it’s a nice place.’

“He stood back up and climbed over the side of the truck, easy as you please. I watched him as we rumbled by and he gave me a proper salute and then winked at me before the truck took a bend in the road and he vanished from my sight.

“That was the last time I saw him.

“I don’t know what those things were that the Nazis made. I don’t know if they used some science no one knows about, or if they used magic to make them. I heard a lot of rumors about the things Himmler was into, and after what I saw at the château, I don’t know if I can honestly doubt anything like I used to.

“I sure as hell don’t know how Jonathan Crowley survived that place and, frankly, if I never meet him again or find out what he did, it will be too soon.”